Sunday, February 26, 2012

Oscar picks

A few hours before the Academy Awards, here are my picks for the major categories. I hafta say, I've done a very poor job of consuming the supposedly creme de la creme films this past year. Except for DRIVE and Dujardin, I really don't feel all that passionately about any film or category below. Should've been more DRIVE. No TROLL HUNTER. No INTO THE ABYSS. No THE GUARD. No TABLOID. No SUCKER PUNCH...

There are two columns of checkboxes next to each nominee. The first one is for who/which film I think will win the award. The second is for whether I've seen the film or not.

If I've got something to say about my choice or the nominees, it'll appear after the nominees. It'll probably be very vague and I'll avoid anything spoilery.

THE ARTIST is irresistibly charming, but if you turn your head slightly, it might be cloying. I did not turn my head slightly. I wish I'd seen WAR HORSE. I can imagine Spielberg doing amazing things with the story, but I just can't make that call not having seen it and having seen THE ARTIST. Wouldn't be surprised if it won, tho. I'm just not seeing what others see in THE DESCENDANTS. MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is another charmer - very fun, but a little thin on substance.

It's just ridiculously charming, and altho I have little firsthand experience with silent films, FEELS so authentic and of the time and style. I'm gonna give Mr. Director-man the credit for that. Altho it brought some very real family relationships, interactions, and rituals to big screen life, I think TREE OF POOP fails to use them to evoke the kind of message and observation/s that the director wished to convey.

I loves me some Pixar! A wonderfully realized rite of passage story that also explains the waxing and waning of the moon. The two brooms are just a crazy and perfect visual win. One among many. My next pick would've been "Sunday." The others are all a distant third. "Morning Stroll" has an ingenious concept behind it, but the styles it adopted for its second and third segments were just a little too much. I felt like the near-future bit tripped over itself while showing off. I know the temptation to throw everything you can into an animated short is difficult to resist, but its typically for the best. "Flying Books" was a sweet idea, but with an overlong execution. An end card mentioned that the film was dedicated to two people who had spent their lives making books come alive (paraphrasing, I think that was the message), added a welcome additional dimension to the experience, but I wish some of that could have been injected at the start.

I don't see a LOT of documentaries, but I usually end up seeing at least one that makes it as a nominee. Boo. Boo on me. I was way off my game in 2011. *sigh* PINA because it's 3-d filmmaking applied to dance. Reviewing the other titles, I can't remember reading or seeing a trailer for any of them. Foo. Why isn't THE INTERRUPTORS here?

I like Michelle. She won a GG for this. I think it's funny that if you didn't know who Glenn Close was, and only read "Glenn Close in ALBERT NOBBS" there's no reason for you to think that the movie would be focused on the life of a cross-dressing woman. =)

It's has some of those annoying anthropomorphized animals otherwise living in our real world logic issues that always bug me when the movie's over, but it is a pretty wonderfully crazy western at heart, and I dig me some crazy westerns. I loved Rango's vision/encounter with the Spirit Of The West. His cheeky identity and the choice of talent to voice him (Olyphant) were a great treat for me. =)

VISUAL EFFECTS[ ]......[X]......“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2”[ ]......[ ]......“Hugo”[ ]......[ ]......“Real Steel”[X]......[X]......“Rise of the Planet of the Apes”[ ]......[X]......“Transformers: Dark of the Moon”

I ate up the new APES movie. It's hard to determine if it is as awesome as I think it is, tho, cuz it pushed a lot of my love-for-the-original-movies buttons, y'know? Eat it, TRANSFORMERS.